


a hopeless case; a perfect thing

by tremontaine



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Dirty Talk, F/M, Face-Sitting, Fluff and Smut, Light Dom/sub, Orgasm Delay, Porn with Feelings, Praise Kink, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-08
Updated: 2016-12-08
Packaged: 2018-09-07 05:33:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8785126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tremontaine/pseuds/tremontaine
Summary: Overcoming your Secret Relationship Issues (TM) in eight easy steps. Well, eight steps, anyway. Well, lots of sex and an argument.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For those who share my particular combination of squicks and kinks, I feel it incumbent upon me to reassure you that _at no point_ in this story does anyone accidentally walk in on, discover or otherwise observe Bucky and Natasha making the beast with two backs.

 

**I.**

It started because half a village had been blown up by some stupid fucking alien artefact, and both Natalia and Steve had been right in the middle of it, and Bucky had nearly gone out of his damn mind, panicked screaming stuck in his throat, his chest an empty barrel where his heart should be, and every other fucking member of their fucking team had made space around him like he was an H-bomb about to go off, and Wilson had crept up behind him all solicitous and grave with that face all nasty-minded gossips put on, oh no we’re just concerned about you, when you and they knew for a fucking fact that all they were was nosy little vultures eager to pick over your pain and examine it for jerk-off purposes later that night.

“I’m sure he’s OK,” he’d said, or something stupid to that effect, and Bucky had shut down all his feelings with the ease of most of a century’s practice and rounded on him with a speed that made him jerk back a step or ten.

“Will you get off your useless fucking ass and start the fucking clean up! Take the witch, get in the air, tell me where the most damage is. Stark, scanners, how many life signs, which buildings are unsafe. Vision, get in there and secure that fucking artefact however you have to. Do we have any kind of headcount for the evacuees?”

The Avengers had jumped to attention like the grass-green raw recruits they were not fucking supposed to be, and had scattered to the four winds to start doing something useful with their stupid fucking selves, Christ al-fucking-mighty, he should not have to fucking tell them what their fucking jobs were, and Bucky was left to coordinate with the Army and reassure the frightened evacuees and generally do his own damn job.

It was only about thirty minutes later that Steve and Nat came stumbling out of the dust clouds filling half the valley and were herded into ambulances by worried Army medics. Bucky spared them half a glance and went on yelling orders; the comms were on the fritz, you could barely make yourself understood. He wasn’t so far away from them that he didn’t hear it when Wilson said, “He gonna come over here and admit he’s glad you’re all right?” and Steve said, “No, he’s gonna do his job,” in that pointed voice, and Wilson had snorted and taken off again, back into the air.

The funny thing, if indeed there was any humour in the situation, which Bucky was inclined to doubt, was that if it had been Steve himself in Bucky’s position Wilson would not be hanging around being a judgemental fuckface. The man seemed to have some script in his head for who Bucky was and was not allowed to be, and the fact that Bucky was apparently defying it at every turn really rubbed him the wrong way.

Most days, Bucky thought it was funny. Yanking Wilson’s chain was easy: he could, for example, be ridiculously earnest about Bucky’s dark and tragic past if you led him on in just the right way. It was hilarious. Most days.

Two hours later everything had calmed down enough that someone had managed to hustle Bucky himself into an ambulance to check him for smoke inhalation and bandage up the lacerations on his right hand, and as he sat there silently, listening to the bustling of the clean-up outside and the sound of Steve joking with Wanda and the others, Natalia climbed into the ambulance.

“Can we get a word?” she said, her face set angrily.

The medic fled, and she shut the door behind him and sat opposite Bucky and lifted his hand up, finished wrapping the bandages. She was filthy with dust and grime, and her fingers were trembling as she worked.

Long silent seconds passed. At last Bucky said, “I almost lost you.”

Natalia looked up. Her eyelashes were wet. “When the roof caved in the only thing I could think was, I forgot to put the laundry on before we left and James will have to do it when he gets home, and it was awful because I said to you that I would do it and –”

“God!” he said; caught the nape of her neck in his left hand and dragged her across the space between them. She gasped as their mouths met, a hot exhalation against his tongue, and suddenly she was in his arms and they were kissing madly, her hot body writhing in his lap, her strong hands pulling at his clothes; they were both filthy, smelled and tasted disgusting, but god, who cared. Bucky yanked her jumpsuit down and pulled her sports bra out of the way and hitched her up against him to suck on her nipples; she clenched one hand into his hair and stuffed the fingers of the other into her mouth to keep herself from crying out, breathing in desperate little hitches. Her skin was so soft and so smooth and so hot, and he loved the way her nipples hardened in his mouth, feeling her body change against his tongue, so much more intimate than using his hands. She yanked his head back at last and dived down to kiss him again, frantic.

“Get out –” Off his lap, sliding down to get her hands on his crotch; he had to shut his eyes against the sight of her kneeling between his spread thighs, his bandaged right hand in her hair.

“Can’t,” he rasped, “someone –”

“Shut _up_. They think I’m in here tearing you a new one for being a dick to Sam.” Natasha pulled at his hips till she had him where she wanted him, and then she bent over and swallowed him down. Bucky jerked helplessly, left hand flung out and gripping – something – to keep himself still; her mouth was beautifully wet and hot around him, the contractions of her throat as she swallowed getting him fully hard in no time, all his blood gone south, pleasure like fire in his veins, sparking up his spine, whitening his vision until she pulled off. He gasped, sudden cold air against his cock, wet with her saliva, and the bandages were beautifully rough when he stroked himself to the sight of her pushing her clothes down around her knees, her nipples peaked, the dirt making patterns on her skin that he resented: only he got to mark her up like that.

She could see it in his face, and it made her grin. “Come here,” she said, catching his right ear and pulling him forwards, and Bucky gripped her ass in both hands so hard she squeaked and dropped silently to his knees and buried his face in her cunt. Now her breathing was hitching like mad, and he knew every strangled little sound she made, urging him on; if his hands weren’t so filthy still he’d tuck his fingers inside her, feel her clench and flutter around him, press on her sweet spot till she was squirming so much she couldn’t keep upright. Instead he groped her pretty ass and sucked and licked at her swollen clit until she yanked on his hair so hard she nearly tore clumps of it out and came, stiffening and then shaking all over, silent, silent. She dropped into his lap, struggling to control her breathing, and nuzzled at his neck, violence and adrenaline subsided with her orgasm, kittenish and affectionate. Bucky closed his arms around her and buried his face in her filthy hair and shuddered. She hadn’t even gotten wet.

Somebody rapped smartly on the ambulance door. Panic swamped him – she was near to naked and he was hard and they would be dragged out and – Natalia’s hand clapped over his mouth.

“Hang on!” she yelled.

“Please leave him alive,” Steve called through the door, and without waiting for an answer he moved off, footsteps clearly audible to Bucky now he was concentrating.

He was breathing hard. Natalia kissed him softly, once, twice, three times, four, five, coaxing him back up where she wanted him, put his hands on her breasts and pressed her bare thigh against his cock, skin rubbing smoothly against him. Bucky swallowed moans and leaned against the stretcher behind him and let her do what she wanted with him, eyes half-closed. Where had that hotel room been, the one with the terrible grey drapes, the dingy little place that had turned into a kind of palace in his memory later on, the place where they had first had the time to be together properly, to strip each other off and take their time… they’d trashed it the first time, but for the second she’d laid him out across the sheets and straddled his hips with a look caught between solemnity and mirth, and had set herself to exploring him with the earnestness of a woman who knew all about the damage she could do to a man’s anatomy and little about the pleasure she could give him. Much too little about the pleasure she could receive, too…

“Back with me?” she whispered in his ear, and he shivered, remembered he was achingly hard and entirely at her mercy.

“Oh yes. You –”

“Shh.” She nudged his thighs apart, curling up between them; he put his hand back in her hair, biting his lip, and choked on his groans when she swallowed him down again, working him over fast and hard. Bucky shuddered, trying to keep silent and still, aching, on fire, burning up, helpless, hers –

There. Oh god. He rocked his hips, grinding into her mouth as she swallowed and sucked and prolonged his orgasm, wishing he was naked so he could feel her hair on his skin, her hands gripping him, but this, this was – this would more than tide him over.

“Natalia,” he murmured, watching her wipe her mouth; she sat up, grinning, and then twisted about to struggle with her underwear, her suit. Bucky caught her chin in his hand and kissed her again, kissed his own taste out of her lovely lush mouth, rubbed his nose against hers. “Little vixen.”

“My darling boy,” she murmured. “God I love watching you take charge of things.” She laughed softly. “I love watching everyone snap to and run about terrified of you, and knowing all the while that you’ll get on your knees for me if I flick my fingers.”

He grinned. “Always.”

“Good,” she said brightly. “So you’ll apologise to Sam?”

“Fuck that, no,” Bucky said indignantly, and went embarrassingly gooey inside when she started giggling.

 

**II.**

The whole team thought the dress was for the benefit of their gun running Hydra-connected terrorist, and the whole team was, as usual, entirely wrong. What a shocker. They were such children, all of them – all assumptions and self-righteousness and refusing to see what was under their very noses, because it didn’t fit with what they wanted to see. Sometimes it was funny; more often, lately, it made her cynical, and very tired.

Occasionally Natasha wondered if, if Leipzig had gone differently, the black choking panic that grabbed her whenever she pictured telling them about her – personal life – would never have started in the first place. But that was crying over spilt milk, and whatever Natasha’s issues with guilt and regret, weeping over other people being irrational idiots was a waste of time. _All_ normal people were irrational idiots. She’d found that out quite quickly.

Anyway. The point was: she didn’t need the Prussian blue with its lovely slit up the side and the plunging neckline to get Swainston’s attention, or access to his rooms. It was, in fact, entirely the most cumbersome and dangerous way of stealing from him. But – à propos of a new shirt she’d bought earlier this week – a certain soldier had mentioned in passing how much he’d always liked her in blue, and she did so love to make him happy.

At least, she hoped she was making him happy. The look on his face when he’d seen her in the dress had been… inconclusive. Maybe the knee-high brown boots had been a little overkill, she thought, searching Swainston’s rooms with methodical thoroughness. He dealt much better with being eternally-suspected ex-terrorist the Winter Soldier than dead national icon Bucky Barnes. That part of him that had been made into an aspect of Steve’s legend sat uneasily on his shoulders, even though, or precisely because, most people couldn’t let go of it… the apparent dichotomy was endlessly fascinating to a certain type of emotional vulture. Aha. Here was the drive. She fished it out from its hiding place wedged behind the wardrobe with a flourish, and jumped when Swainston started to snore.

“Really?” she said in disgust. Sometimes the drug did make them snore, and for some ridiculous reason she’d always considered it a sign of a weak character. But they all had their silly superstitions and rituals, in this business. When Clint took his wedding ring off to go into the field he kissed it, put it in a box, and put the box in the bottom drawer of Laura’s nightstand, rather than his own. The one time he’d left it on the bed and rushed out in a hurry he’d been on his way to the Nevada assignment to watch over Dr Selvig. Lining up a shot, James would tap out a pattern on the barrel of the rifle with the fingertips of his middle and ring fingers which, according to Steve, was a habit he’d always had…

Anyway. Natasha straightened up what little mess she’d made and paused in the bathroom to pinch her lips and cheeks, make them reddened and swollen, muss her hair just right, twist her dress. She tucked the drive into the top of her pantyhose, her newly-untidy hair falling over her face; then she turned to go, and smacked neatly into her Soldier’s solid chest.

“Oh, what!”

“You,” James said roughly, hands pinching her upper arms, “are a malicious little tease.” He pushed her back, two steps, three, four, crowding her up against the bathroom wall, and then dropped his phone onto the edge of the sink, where they could both see if anyone wanted him. “You need to walk out of here looking like you just got fucked, baby? Not. A. Problem.”

Natasha whooped. “I was starting to think you hadn’t noticed. Drop your pants and put your back into it, Sergeant.”

He hid his face in her hair, shoulders shaking with laughter. “The actual worst,” he said in a muffled voice, hands on her hips, sliding back to her ass, gathering the dress up. “God, when you walked out wearing this –”

“You said you liked me in blue.” Innocently.

“I do, oh I do.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck, grinning, leaning against him with her head tilted back, her throat exposed. “You how else I know you like me?”

His eyes narrowed. “Naked in our bed, filthy with me and crying with how hard I’ve just made you come?”

Hot arousal jolted her, made her speechless, weak in the knees, for a few moments, going straight to her cunt. Then she hitched up on her tiptoes, brought her mouth to his ear and said, “Oh, the arrogance of you.”

“I never boast,” he said, boasting. “And you know it.”

“I do. I know you like me all yours, too. Marked up; owned. Wandering around in public wearing your colours while every asshole in the place drools over what they’ll never have.”

His turn to swallow, sway a little. He touched her neck, the side of her face; his thumb rubbed over her mouth, and she licked at it, smiling, pursing her lips around body-warm metal, over the knuckle and the delicate rills until she met the leather of his glove. “Fuck you up against this wall while Swainston snores next door and everyone in the world but you and me thinks it’s him that’s had you.”

Natasha laughed, delighted, wrapping her fingers around his wrist and pushing his hand down to her breast. The bra had no padding, provided the barest minimum of support in case she had to do any running; she loved the way James caressed her, the flush on his face, the way he was biting that pouty lower lip. “Want you in me,” she said, rubbing the rills of his wrist, knowing he could feel every teasing touch. “Want you to hold me up and fuck me with your left hand, want you to walk back out there and smell me on your fingers every time you move your hand near your face.” He’d pushed her dress up around her hips, and when he ripped her pantyhose carelessly apart along the crotch seam the drive fell to the floor and bounced away, clattering; his hot fingers cupped her cunt through her panties.

“No requisition department is ever gonna ask what happened to a pair of these again.” James’ voice was all lovely rough satisfaction, deepened with lust.

The reminder, the _promise_ , went straight to her cunt. God, he could walk out into the hotel bar afterwards and brag about fucking her to everyone within earshot and it wouldn’t matter. She was going to leave here flushed and dishevelled and stinking of sex and it would not matter. Her blood was pounding, her face hot; her cunt was swelling open under his fingers, she was drenching her underwear, it stuck to her and slid over her skin as he rubbed at her. Strong rough fingers; she could smell his sweat, his aftershave, his body heat enfolded her. Natasha rocked her hips into his hand and pulled his head down to whisper in his ear, hot all over, her voice rasping. “No they won’t. Nobody is ever going to make us hide each other again, and I want to carve my name into your skin so deep it’ll never heal, so even when you don’t know yourself you know you’re _mine_.”

The noise he made was barely human. He wrenched her underwear aside and sunk two fingers inside her; Natasha fell back against the wall, crying out, her hands shaking as she dragged at his pants, his underwear, pushed them down until his cock was in her hands, hot and hard, skin soft to the touch, his pre-come sticky on her fingers. His lips were parted now, wet where he’d licked them, oh now he went silent, now he was inside her. He finger-fucked her relentlessly, rubbing at her sweet spot, her hips rolling to meet him; her eyelids were fluttering, she saw his flushed concentrated lovely face through the curtain of her own eyelashes.

All that heat and strength and skill and intelligence and kindness and determination hers, hers, _hers_ , and she caught his chin in her hand, her thumb pressing into his mouth the way his had pressed into hers, and said harshly, “Fuck me, fuck me now, I don’t want to walk straight leaving here,” and James caught a handful of her ass and lifted her one-handed, stepped in close and let her legs settle over his hips, pulled his fingers out and positioned himself and dropped her casually onto his cock, a lovely sudden impalement that burned just right, thick and hot and not a moment too soon. Natasha wound her arms around his neck again, gasping, let her head fall forwards and kissed him, breathless with it, sloppy and uncoordinated, and when he started to fuck her in earnest she fought back a wail.

Every thrust jolted her against the wall, drove the breath from her body, forced her open, claimed her, owned her. She wanted to claw at his back and bite hickeys into his soft defenceless throat, scratch her nails down his chest and worry his nipples sore, but only one of them was supposed to walk out of here looking like they’d just been fucked silly; nothing to do but enjoy the ride. Oh god, the heat of his body, the hammering of his heart so close, the harsh breaths he panted into her mouth as she kissed him. She was going to get her wish not to walk straight. Natasha pitched forwards and buried her face in his shoulder, breathing in quick strangled little gasps, desperate to muffle the scream she wanted to give, and god, god, she nearly burst into laughter, Swainston was still snoring in the bedroom.

They’d never done anything as mad as this when – back before. Out here exposed in the middle of a mission – anyone could come looking for them, anyone might find them, anyone might notice the time discrepancies, the – the –

“Tasha,” James said harshly, as if he’d read her mind; had she showed her thoughts somehow? “My Natalia.”

Yes, always, only ever his. “James.” She let herself moan, let it be loud, lust-drunk, enthusiastic. His phone was lighting up with texts, the others wondering where he was, if there was an emergency. Natasha groped for it, flung it across the room and out the bathroom door; it bounced across the thick bedroom carpet and lay still, face down, unimportant. “Oh, oh god. Fuck me, James, I – never stop. Never, ever stop.”

“Never,” he promised her raggedly. “ _Never_.” She was sliding against the wall as he fucked her, the dress damp with sweat; his body between her thighs rubbed deliciously against the pantyhose, the hem of his shirt brushing her knees. Oh god, oh _god_. She flexed her hands against his shoulders as every thrust drove the breath out of her body in low helpless cries; he was breathing unsteadily himself, fast and hitching, little rumble in his chest of suppressed moans, the noise of their bodies coming together increasingly obscene as he drove them both to desperation, he was so big and so hot and it was so quick and fierce that she could barely focus on the delicious drag and push of him inside her; there was nothing but the thrum of pleasure, the tight grip of his hands on her ass, his hot breath on her chest when he dropped his forehead to her shoulder, panting.

“You feel so good, Tasha. You always feel so fucking good.” Little croon in his voice now, winding her up higher; she knew that voice, knew exactly what was coming, tense and longing for it. “So good to me, dressing up and telling everyone you’re mine, fucking stunning how you worked that room, wrap everyone round your little finger and watch ‘em hang ‘emselves, never get enough of watching you work.” Something always snapped inside her when he praised her, tension unravelling into hot languid pleasure, the glowing satisfaction of having impressed the one person who knew her inside out, the one person who had all the knowledge required to give a judgement she was forced to respect. “Every word just right, every little move perfect, like a dance. Gonna come for me now, sweetheart? Want to see, want to feel you tighten up so sweet around me, want to hold you after, all sweet and soft and dizzy with it. Love how sweet you get after, how easy you laugh, how you can’t stop touching me. Yeah. Let me have it.”

She was too close to get a word out, squirming against him, rocking into every uneven thrust, gasping as he began to lose the rhythm. Her hand shook as she pushed the stupid panties aside and brushed away her tangled pubic hair, oh god she was soaked, filthy, she couldn’t resist stroking his cock with her fingertips as he slid out, pushed in, laughed in delight at the lovely shudder that took hold of him, the way he cried out, right on the edge. “Yeah, yes, with me, come on.”

“You – Natalia –”

Pressure just there, her clit hard and swollen under her fingers, and the world spun away as she spasmed and shook, distantly aware of him pulsing inside her, her heartbeat thundering in her own ears. Slowly reality reasserted itself, starting with his harsh pants by her ear, the uncomfortable sweaty heat of mostly-clothed sex, the ache in her thighs where she was gripping his waist so tight, the hard wall at her back.

The incongruous noise of Swainston’s drugged snoring. Suddenly Natasha started to giggle, a ridiculous girlish noise; after a moment or two James joined in, suppressed sniggering dissolving into fits of laughter. His phone was vibrating across half the bedroom carpet.

“Oh god, quick, stop them before they come up here –”

“Why did you throw it over there,” he groaned. “I can’t move, I can’t –”

“Don’t be so ridiculous!” But when he lifted her off his cock Natasha slid down the wall and collapsed into a puddle on the floor, still in stitches of laughter. Her mood had improved by about a thousand percent; everything she’d found annoying an hour ago was now hilarious, and oh how stupidly in love she was. Even the way James had to steady himself on the basin to pull his underwear and pants back up was stunningly attractive.

“You’re a bad influence,” he said, stumbling towards the phone.

“You came after me!” Natasha toppled sideways as she groped for the drive, sniggering. “Oh my god, why did you do that to my pantyhose.”

“Because I couldn’t wait for you to take them off,” he said. “ _Duh_. OK, OK, they’re called off.”

“What did you say?” She pulled herself up by the basin and tried to tug her underwear back into place; god she was filthy. At home it would have been sexy: she would have sprawled across their bed and spread her legs so he could lick her clean, or petted him until they were both ready again. The prospect of the drive home was not _very_ appealing, good mood notwithstanding.

“Something something saw someone I thought I recognised, something.” James offered her a pristine handkerchief, smiling crookedly. “Sorry.”

“Mmm. Don’t be.” She wet it under the hot water tap and wiped first her face – her make-up was a disaster – and then, folding the cloth over, her inner thighs. James put his arm around her waist and kissed her hair.

“I’ll drop the drive off and then take you home.”

“Thank you, darling.” Natasha turned her face up for a kiss, sweet and slow and promising. When they drew apart she grinned at him. “God this dress was worth every cent.”

“You’re incorrigible,” he said gleefully, and kissed her again.

It took him ages to get back to the car; as it turned out, this was because after he’d handed the drive off to their overly-anxious compatriots he’d nipped into the pharmacy down the road and bought her new underwear.

 

**III.**

Whenever either or both of them needed to stay in the Avengers compound for whatever reason the rule – if rule it could be called, rather than simply ‘inevitable result’ – was that they didn’t go to each other’s rooms, and they didn’t have sex on-site.

It was one thing to sneak around, adrenaline-fueled and a little stupid with excitement, in the middle or aftermath of a mission. It was another to slink along darkened chrome and glass corridors in the early hours of the morning, moving from blind spot to blind spot, to scratch lightly on bedroom doors and fuck hurriedly in narrow bunks and leave again before the sun came up. That was – that was not the fun part of having a secret relationship, let’s put it like that.

But it had been a fucking terrible day all round, not to put too fine a point on it, and Natasha – Bucky wasn’t sure what had thrown Natalia off this evening, but she’d been a little too professional since they got back… she didn’t usually pass up a beer in the common rooms; she liked to keep an eye on everybody’s moods and relationships, and after-mission drinks was the best way to do it. Today she’d excused herself, pleading a headache and various other aches and pains, without catching his eye or giving him a sign by any kind of coded gesture.

She knew it would worry him. He wouldn’t put it past the little vixen to have done that deliberately – summon him by not giving a sign… He drank a beer and ate a sandwich with the others, spoke to Steve and Wanda and Barton, circled the room under the pretence of tidying up to make sure everyone was OK, and then, when he was sure they were settled in for another hour or two at least, he left himself. No one would notice anything unusual there. Bucky hadn’t exactly taken to propping up walls and sulking into a pint the way Steve had used to do of a Friday night out, but given the choice he’d rather spend the night with Natalia and Sunday with Steve one on one.

It wasn’t that he disliked people in general, these days, or even the Avengers in specific; they were good kids, and he enjoyed their company. But there was only a finite amount of time in the world, and Bucky knew where his priorities were.

The halls were dark and empty. No one saw him turn left instead of right on the fourth floor; no one saw him ghost along the wrong dorms corridor, making for the light that shone under Natasha’s door, or heard it when he tapped lightly at the metal.

They had done nothing so easily traceable as give one another access to their respective rooms. If she wanted him, she’d have to let him in.

She wanted him. The door slid open almost at once. Fizzy relief went to his head, and he stepped inside. The room was as Spartan as his own; the only personal objects in the place were her weapons. She was on the bed, wearing a nightdress, towelling her beautiful hair; the room was filled with steam and the smell of her shower gel, her skin glistening with freshly-applied lotion, and when he’d shut the door behind himself she dropped the towel into her lap and looked up at him and smiled – shadowed, tired, but a smile.

“Hi, honey,” she said. “How was your day?”

“Oh you know,” Bucky said vaguely. “I think I saved the world a little.” She laughed softly, and he tossed the towel aside by the pillows and drew her to her feet and into his arms. “I missed you,” he said suddenly, just before he made to kiss her.

Natasha pulled back, surprised. “I was right here.”

“Not really.”

The lovely mouth parted in objection. Then she bit her lower lip. “No, I guess not.” Her nose wrinkled adorably, her green eyes gone thoughtful. “I missed you too.” As if she’d only just noticed; as if – as if she’d just discovered the ultimate cause of her own bad humour, and found it was something she’d never considered before. She put her hands to either side of his neck, rubbing her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck. “I really missed you.”

“Mmm.” He kissed her – sweet, slow, a Sunday morning sort of a kiss, brushing their mouths together, all the time in the world. He cupped her hips in his hands, rubbing his palms in circles, bunching the thin material of the nightdress, as the kiss turned a little deeper, a little wet. Then Natasha’s nails dug into his skin, and something hot flashed down his spine and tightened his stomach, and suddenly it was a different sort of Sunday morning entirely – not the make-out-in-bed-and-then-go-out-for-brunch kind of Sunday but the put-all-the-shades-down-and-fuck-each-other-stupid kind, when they had the rest of the week off and nothing else to do but stretch every lovely sex game they could come up with over half a day or more. Bucky liked to think of those days as a cosmic fuck you to a universe that had given them nothing but hurried, hidden, desperate trysts for so long…

(And, what, now they _kept_ having hurried, hidden, desperate trysts because they just couldn’t get out of the habit?)

“Hey,” he murmured. Grinned against the corner of her mouth. “You want something?”

Shiver of laughter. “You offering?”

“Everything,” he said, “like always.”

Her eyes were shining. “If Steve comes looking for you…”

“If there’s a fire alarm and we all have to run out of here at three a.m. in our pyjamas,” Bucky said. “Don’t borrow trouble.”

Natasha raised her eyebrows. “Oh _I_ worry too much?”

He laughed, pulling her closer, snugging her soft curves tight against his body. “Make your mind up quick.”

She kissed him briefly, bit at his lower lip. “You’re not going to convince me you’re about to leave, Barnes.”

“No,” he murmured. “No, I guess I won’t.” Lovely, drawn-out kiss; he pressed her back towards the bed, and they toppled over easily, her wet hair falling in tangled hanks across the mattress; he crawled over her and kissed the sweet hot mouth over and over as her hands busied themselves with the buttons of his shirt. At last he sent it flying, and lowered himself over her so the nightdress rubbed against his bare skin, the contours of her body pressed against his own beautifully, hard muscle and soft curves equally enticing.

“Hmm.” She wriggled about till her legs were no longer trapped under his but splayed at either side of him; rubbed her right foot over his calf, hooked her left leg over his hip. He slid deeper into the cradle of her body, aligned just right, her cunt pressing against his fly; he was hard enough already that she’d be able to feel it, and when she rocked her hips he smiled.

“What’re you after?”

“Mm. Nothing really.” Natasha rubbed her warm hands down his flanks, over his back; Bucky sighed, pressing against her touch, lazy pleasure coiling around his spine, spreading out over his skin.

“Yeah? Hey, c’mere.” He rolled them over, sprawling out on his back across her bed, and urged her up to her knees as she laughed, trying to keep quiet about it. “Here.” God she had a gorgeous ass, and when he groped it she rocked back against his hands, biting her lip, a pretty flush on her cheekbones. She pitched forwards over him, wet hair hanging over her shoulders, nightdress gaping nicely over her lovely tits, her hands on the headboard above his head to steady herself as he urged her up to sit on his face.

“Keep you quiet.” She settled in comfortably, hovering over him; Bucky squinted up at her as he pushed the nightdress up around her hips.

“Am I loud?”

“No,” she said cheerfully, “but you talk a lot.”

“Ah. Guilty as charged.” He ran his fingers through her pubic hair, rubbed her outer labia with his thumbs before he stroked the damp curls out of the way and spread her. Her breathing was faster, hitching; she was trying to keep it under control, to not be too loud. The smell of her lotion and her body was thick and cloying in his nostrils, her thighs around his face hot, and Bucky spread his legs unconsciously, licked his lips and pulled her down to his mouth. Everything else in the world always got a little muffled like this: nothing left but Natasha… he couldn’t see a thing but her, was trapped and helpless underneath her; it was a kind of surrender, this, letting her be the only one who could see, assess, react.

That always turned him on. His hips were twitching, his hardening cock pressing against his fly; he wanted to reach down and open his pants and stroke himself, but he didn’t want to take his hands off her ass, loving the soft skin under his palms, the way she tensed and squirmed about. He had her wet and writhing in no time; she always loved to have his mouth on her, loved to be licked at and played with and teased, rocking her hips over his face, gasping when he sucked on her swollen little clit, licked along the root of it delicately, nuzzled her labia, licked at her hole until her slick soaked his face and she was biting her fingers to stop herself from begging him.

Yeah. Having Nat sit on his face was one of his favourite ways to spend an evening. Soft, hot flesh that slid more smoothly against his nose or tongue or lips as she grew wetter, the way her body changed because of him: swelling open, beckoning. She dropped her hand into his hair and pulled at him, so he opened his eyes and tipped his head back to look up at her: lovely flush cascading down her throat and chest, her eyes fluttering and her lush mouth bitten red and swollen, her nipples hard against the clingy nightdress. One of its straps had fallen off her shoulder, the neckline lopsided, sliding down over her left breast. When she looked down at him her hair fell over her shoulders, and a last few drops of water fell onto his forehead.

“Don’t stop now.” Her thighs were tense and quivering, and when he reached between her legs and gathered her slick on his fingertips her stomach muscles jumped, her hips rocking forwards. “ _James_.”

Bucky sucked her clit into his mouth and tucked his wet fingers into her asshole; her hips stuttered and her body tensed all over, a breath like a strangled cry, and then that long sigh she always gave as she came down again, breathing still quick but a little hum on her lips as he kissed her through it, feeling her twitch and shiver with aftershocks. At last she pulled away, nearly falling onto his chest, and he laughed at her as she struggled to lie down beside him with some kind of dignity in spite of her shaky knees.

“Oh, what.”

“If you can manage _graceful_ at a time like this I’m a failure.”

Natasha laughed softly, head tipped back against the pillows, long flushed throat exposed. He pushed that beckoning left side of the nightdress down to cup her breast in his hand, rub her nipple with two fingers. She shivered again, sighed when he bent over her and made to kiss her.

“You’re filthy.”

“All you,” he said, self-satisfied.

She groped past him for the damp towel and wiped his face with it, smiling. “Ordinarily I like you best that way.”

Ordinarily meant, safe at home in their own bed. Bucky fell back into the pillows again, sighing. “Tomorrow…” He shuddered when she bent over him and kissed his scars, soft lips drifting over the seam of his left shoulder, from sensitive flesh to deadened scar tissue to the zing of artificial feeling in the prosthetic.

“I can’t wait for tomorrow,” she said, and he could almost feel her hot breath condensing on the metal plates of his shoulder. “I can’t wait to get out of this hellhole of a compound and put my hands on you again, walk into the subway with your arm across my shoulders.” Her voice wobbled. Bucky held very still, even his breath caught his in throat. “I can’t wait to shut that stupid apartment door behind ourselves and hear you forget my name for the first twenty-four hours because you’re busy calling me every stupid endearment you’ve been choking back the whole time we’ve been out –”

“That’s a lot of endearments,” Bucky said, and when Natasha made a funny noise in her throat he caught her tight against his chest and kissed her hot face over and over, his leg slung over hers. “Sweetheart, what are we _doing_.”

“Nothing we haven’t always done. Oh I love you. I love you. Why don’t you make me say it more often?”

“I’m a mind-reader,” he said irreverently. She snorted adorably, kissed the corner of his mouth, the tip of his nose, that stupid dip in his chin. Her hair had dried into a staticky tangle, strands of it floating about and stroking his face and shoulders, soft and ticklish. Little wriggle of her body that brought her thigh up against his groin; he shuddered all over, remembering he was uncomfortably hard and the taste of her cunt was in his mouth and her near-naked curves were pressed all up against him.

“My love,” Natasha said, punctuating her sentence with kisses. “My darling, my beautiful” – Bucky snorted derisively – “ _beautiful_ love, don’t interrupt.” She pushed him over onto his back again, ran her hand over his chest, playing with his chest hair, faintest, sweetest suggestion of scratches he would carry for days. If he asked nicely. Heat was curling through him again, his hips moving involuntarily, and he closed his hands on the sheets to stop himself burying them in her hair and pushing her head down to his cock. “Can I help you with something, dearest?” Even through his jeans her hand was hot. She rubbed at him lazily, and he closed his eyes, breathing hard. “Yes, I think I’d better.”

“Little tease,” he said, remembering the blue dress. Oh that dress.

She licked at his nipples, smiling. “I like you all wound up.”

“Is there any way you don’t like me?” And promptly could have bitten his tongue off; Christ, what a fucking stupid thing to – but Natasha was laughing.

“Apart from me,” she said, and knelt up to unbutton his jeans – he lifted his hips off the mattress so she could push them and his underwear down – no teasing now; she straddled him a graceful move, and Bucky choked on a cry at the lovely hot feeling of her fingers around his cock, holding him in place; fuck, fuck, her soft wet labia rubbing at the head as she teased herself and then angled her hips just right and sank down on him slow and sweet. God. The way her body opened for him was poetry, clinging sweetly, clutching him as she braced her hands on his chest and pushed back up. Bucky watched her hair shake around her head through half-closed eyes, the pretty bounce of her tits under the nightdress, the muscles in her arms taut. She was so hot inside, so soft and tight and wanting; he loved the lovely drag of her around him when she pushed up to her knees, her body’s reluctance to let him go, the ease with which she accepted him back inside. It made him dizzy, hot, stupid with lust.

“Yeah,” she said, breathless, and clenched herself around him tight, nearly wringing a moan out of him. “Oh yeah. Feel you all through tomorrow, right till we get home.”

“God you feel –” Bucky swallowed a cry, slid his hands up her thighs to her hips, muscles moving under hot skin; he mustn’t bruise her, not till they were home, what if –

She raked her nails down his abs, and he strangled a yell and bucked up into her, gripping her tight; she laughed at him.

“Don’t wait –”

“No. God. God, Nat, I love you.” He squeezed his eyes shut, gasping, tight hot pleasure all over, fumbling between her legs to press his thumb against her clit; then it snapped, his mind blanked beautifully for long perfect seconds, and he only knew that she’d come too by the way she breathed as she fell across his chest.

Happy little sigh when he rolled them onto their sides again; Natasha snuggled against him, yawning, and pouted when he remembered he was still wearing his baseball boots and his jeans were tangled round his knees, and sat up to get rid of them. He dragged the duvet over them and kissed her good night; she’d already dropped off, she didn’t respond.

The next morning, at breakfast, she very deliberately sat down next to him – a thing they’d always been careful not to do before – and when Bucky saw the determined little curve of her mouth he poured her a coffee without bothering to pretend he didn’t know how she liked it. No one noticed, but that wasn’t the point.

 

**IV.**

The coat was a deliberate and calculated counter-attack, the first answering volley in the opening battle of a war. It hung, pristinely, beautifully new, from a hanger in their coat-rack by the door, along with her trench and two of her leather jackets. He’d put his other coats away, presumably so she couldn’t miss seeing this one. It was a lovely coat, she had to admit: perfect collar to turn up, the pockets big enough to fit one of his ratty old paperbacks, smartly double-breasted, and black as pitch – except for the lining, which was a deep, extravagant, beautiful burgundy red.

Natasha tapped her foot. Sneaky little – how long had he been scouring New York for the perfect piece of clothing? She should have known. She really should have known. He was incorrigible. The red was a shade too dark, of course, but catch James Buchanan Barnes parading around in anything too bright and noticeable. He liked to dress well, but he liked being unobtrusive even more.

She checked her watch. Half an hour before he got back. Hmm. Potentially, of course, starting a war with one of the two finest soldiers on the planet was a risky, not to say suicidal, move, but she really couldn’t let that coat go. And good god the Swainston mission had been a total delight. Natasha went a little weak in the knees remembering it; a tiny shiver of arousal clenched her up.

Then she kicked her boots off and made a beeline for the shower. Hurried but thorough, she dabbed scent on and blow-dried her hair into clean, shining tangles, artless imitation of bedhead. Make-up? No. It would only get all over the sheets. Drinks? Afterwards. She made sure there was wine in the fridge, dimmed all the lights, and flung the duvet into a beckoning heap. There were still a few minutes left to debate the merits of underwear vs. no underwear; having decided on none, she stuffed the nightdress she’d put on after the shower back into the wardrobe and walked naked into the hall. They owned an apartment: she could walk around naked in it whenever she liked. Only James would ever know. Sometimes she remembered that and thrilled to it. Out in the stairwell the elevator dinged and the doors slid back; then she heard a familiar footstep.

Natasha pulled the coat off the hanger and wrapped herself in it. Oh it was lovely – the wool beautifully heavy, the lining soft and cool against her bare skin. He did have taste. What a delightful thing to have discovered about him after all that time in tac gear and leather armour and second-hand clothes – that the Winter Soldier could be vain. She went back into the living room, grinning to herself, and fell into the armchair, one leg stretched out, the other foot propped on the coffee table, hurriedly tugged into place; thus her bare knee poked out of the folds of the coat. She tweaked the lapels so they showed her cleavage, and propped her head on her hand, her hair curling against the black wool.

Just in time. The keys rattled, and the front door opened; he must be on the phone, because he was chuckling. Thump of his duffle hitting the floor, clatter as he kicked his boots off, and then the sound of his footsteps in the hall; pause – in front of the coat rack? Natasha grinned – and then resumed.

“Course not,” James was saying as he came round the corner into the living room; he was undoing his jacket with his left hand, the phone in his right. “I would never say that. I would, however, say that you are being –”

He stopped short. She’d never seen his jaw actually, literally drop before. It was very satisfying. Look at the perfect o that luscious mouth was making. Natasha wriggled a little, carefully, leaning forwards so the coat gaped the slightest bit across her breasts. She heard him swallow from all the way across the room.

“Steve,” he said, and had to stop and clear his throat. God, the way he looked at her, the honesty of it: he wanted to fuck her, and it was written all over his face, and he never had to hide it again. It made her wet. “I gotta call you back. What, no. Nothing’s wrong. _Nothing is wrong_. I just gotta go talk to this stunning redhead – yeah, you suck too, asshole. All right. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He hung up the phone and dropped it onto the couch; she thought his hands were shaking.

“Hello, Soldier,” she said lazily.

He shook his head, moving towards her; Natasha raised a finger to stop him.

“Strip,” she said, dropping her finger down towards the floor.

James’ mouth curled into a grin so vicious it went straight to her cunt. Scarf; leather jacket. God those shoulders. He rolled them deliberately as he slid the jacket off. Underneath he wore a grey pullover, white t-shirt showing at the neck, dark jeans lovely and tight. Lazily he brought his hand to his mouth and pulled his glove off by pinching the leather at his fingertips between his teeth and tugging; the lights gleamed dully in the metal plates as they were slowly revealed. Natasha bit the inside of her cheek, her body throbbing with hot arousal. She knew far too well what that hand could do.

He knew far too well how much it turned her on. Carefully he stripped the pullover off but not his t-shirt; his hair was a mess, his mouth wet where he’d licked his lips. Natasha tilted her head and gave him a once-over – black socks, dark jeans, heavy belt; the t-shirt rucked up at his hips, hinting at his happy trail, the cut of his Adonis’ belt. Her heart was pounding in her chest. It felt like a long while since the last time she’d really looked at James: the powerful shoulders, the heavy muscles of his chest and upper arm, the flat hard stomach, the strong thighs. Vulnerable throat, square jaw and cleft in his chin, captivating mouth, thick dark hair, pale eyes whose gaze caught and held her own: tender and turned-on and conspiratorial all at once, promising secrets for him and her alone. She loved the angles of his face, his jawline, his cheekbones, the way he could be boyish and sulky at once, how his stoicism softened just for her.

“I’m glad you like the coat,” he said, all dark and husky, and bent to pull his socks off, because he was an asshole.

“I love it,” she said. “It’s so comfortable, and warm, and soft on my skin…”

A muscle jumped in his jaw. He kicked his socks aside and caught the hem of his t-shirt. “Don’t do that. I _know_ you haven’t been home that long.”

She widened her eyes innocently. “Do what?”

“Make me picture you bringing yourself off in that armchair wearing nothing but my coat.”

“My coat really,” she said. “My colours.” The dratted t-shirt came off at last in a smooth ripple of muscle; she was determined not to moan, no matter how badly she wanted to run her hands through his chest hair and rub up against him.

“I want you to know,” James said, hands on the waistband of his jeans, “that whenever I jerk off these days I think of you in that blue dress.”

“I think about the look on your face when you saw me in it,” Natasha said. She heaved a sigh that coincided with the top button opening. Black underwear. Very functional. Oh, oh, she should get him some red ones. Nobody would know but the two of them. Perfect. “Remind me to wear it again.”

Second button open; then third. She could see the outline of his cock pressing against the fabric. “We’d never leave this apartment again.”

She flexed her legs, smiling. “What a tempting thought.” Fourth, fifth button. He pushed his jeans down over his ass and stepped out of them, straightening up in another lovely ripple of muscle. How dared he be so gorgeous, anyway.

“All the way?”

“Yes.”

Thumbs in the waistband of the boxer-briefs. “And then?”

“Strip and find out.” Natasha laughed at him.

James stripped off the boxer-briefs and dropped them on top of his jeans. Natasha slid down a little in the armchair and began, oh so slowly, to part her thighs. He was biting his lip so hard it was white, clenching his hands by his thighs as she twitched the coat aside and ran her fingers over her cunt. It surprised her, how wet she was already, how open, little frissons of lust sparking through her body.

“Come here.”

Three quick steps, four; he rucked the coffee table away impatiently, all sleek grace when he went to his knees at her feet and wrapped his hands around her calves. _Oh_. Natasha shivered. It was so good, when they’d been teasing each other like this, that first warm sure touch. His lips were chapped, the dead skin scratching on her inner thighs, his breath hot and his mouth wet; he suckled bruises into the meat of her left thigh, then her right, the delicious ache contrasting with and heightening her arousal. His hair brushed her skin, his hands drew her knees over his shoulders, forcing her hips to tilt, pulling her forwards.

“I love how much you love giving head,” Natasha said breathlessly.

“You’re about to make a mess of my coat,” James said, and leaned in and licked her from her perineum to her clit, lovely lovely friction all firm and hot. Natasha’s hips twisted up, her moan very loud in the quiet of the apartment. Their apartment, in which she could be as loud as she liked, in which they could fuck in every room in the place, against every piece of furniture: no one would ever know. No one would ever care. She closed her eyes and sighed and squirmed, loving the care he took, the heat of his mouth; she was throbbing with lust, aching, her skin tight, her breathing quick. His clever tongue curling inside her made her claw at the armchair, gasping, as he rubbed at her walls, trying to reach her sweet spot. She was going to come in another minute, she needed him to touch her clit, oh _god_. At last she remembered she had hands of her own, pushed her pubic hair back, her fingers in his face as she went to get them wet.

He grabbed her wrist, pulling back. “Hey, who’s running this outfit?”

“ _Me_ ,” Natasha said, “you ridiculous –” breaking into laughter when he pushed her legs off his shoulders so he could pull her off the chair into his lap. “Oh no you don’t, I had a plan!”

“I don’t care,” James said, “I’ve stuck it out long enough without kissing you,” and proceeded to correct that oversight at considerable length and very great attention to detail. Natasha cupped his face in her hands and pressed close to him and kissed him back, sighing happily, her eyes half-closed. The coat must be rubbing harshly against his bare skin, abrading his nipples. He had his right arm across her shoulders, his cock wet with pre-come pressed against her thigh. Wet and hot and thorough, his kisses took her apart and left her aching, empty, longing for him, anticipation heavy in her chest. And yet: she could happily have sat here and kissed him for the rest of the day, his bare skin hot against her own, lazy contentment weighing her limbs down.

“I love you,” James murmured at last. “Natalia, I love you.”

“I love you too.” She had promised herself to say it more often, to be as explicit about it as he was, even though he had never minded it that some days she found it difficult. But for all that she knew he didn’t mind, the delighted little smile he got when she said it delighted her in turn – the way his face softened, the pleased curve of his mouth. Little huff of laughter before he kissed the corner of her mouth, and Natasha said it again, gleefully. “I love you.”

James shook his head, laughing a little, and bent to kiss her jaw, her neck, her collar-bone. Natasha stroked her hands down his chest, tracing the hard muscles, paying close attention to the texture of his skin, smooth or scarred or covered with hair. There, the steady thrum of his heartbeat, ribcage rising and falling as he breathed, the lines of his abs. She pushed him a little to angle his torso away from her and bent her head to lick and worry at his nipples; he gasped, twisting, responsive to it as a girl, and she held him in place firmly, her hands tight on his sides. Left and then right, she scraped the sensitive skin with her teeth, kissed and sucked at him till he moaned her name.

“I love you,” she said a third time, rubbing her thumb along his happy trail, feeling his stomach muscles twitch, the shiver that took him. Carefully she rose up and straddled his lap properly, folded the coat back so her naked breasts rested against his chest; carefully she took his cock in her hands, teasingly gentle, smiling as it jerked with her touch, hard and hot and sticky with his pre-come. He drew a deep slow breath, hid his face in her neck, his arms still tight around her. “I don’t tell you enough. Shush, this is _my_ show.” Natasha pitched her voice low, made it croon. Well, god, if it got her going she didn’t see why it wouldn’t do the same for him. Strip him down and pin him down and make him listen to how amazing he was. 

“You’re beautiful – you know, I used to dream about your eyes. You look at me like – I used to dream about it. I didn’t remember who you were or why you’d bother looking at me like I was something precious, but I’d dream, and I’d ache for it to be real.” All this power given up to her, and she was doing something with it that made him laugh and sigh and clutch her close, something that made shivers of pleasure chase over his skin. Something good, she was doing, something that pleased him, made him happy. That helpless smile, boyish, almost shy, was addictive, the warmth it put in her chest even more so. Stroking his cock, she avoided all the places that would get him off at once – gently, gently, bit by bit. “Just being near you makes me happy. I love that I’m the only one who gets to see you smile, that you try so hard not to let your bad days show, that when I have mine you don’t ever push at me. You’re always so good to me, just, tiny little things, but all the time. I love your terrible sense of humour, and how hard you try to do some good with what they made you…”

“Tasha,” James said harshly. He was rocking his hips up into her hands involuntarily, goosebumps on his skin, tense all over, talking into the coat, his head still resting on her shoulder. “Natasha, sweet –”

“If I tell you not to come,” she murmured in his ear, and laughed softly when he groaned. “There. You’re going to fuck me right here with the coat on… and when we’re done we’re going to shower, and then go to bed, and if you’re apart from me for longer than five minutes for the rest of the night I’m going to be _very_ put out.”

“Put out,” James said, snorting, but his hands were busy already, pushing the coat back, lifting her hips; he rose up onto his knees and tipped her backwards, her shoulders and head on the seat of the armchair. Natasha laughed out loud, her left foot on the coffee table, and wrapped her hands around his forearms; he was holding her hips tightly, her legs at his waist.

“Like this?”

“Like this is _perfect_.” She tipped her head back to look up at the ceiling, gasping as his cock rubbed along her slit. “Slowly. I want to feel you.”

He gritted his teeth. “Have I ever told you –”

“Malicious tease. Oh yes. And tomorrow morning you’re going to put this coat on and wear it into HQ and get hard every time you look up and see it hanging in your office, innocent as the – oh – _oh_.” Slowly he was pushing inside her, working back out, inch by inch, fucking her open for him, as carefully as if she’d never taken him before. Oh _lovely_. Slowly was teasing her beautifully just as much as him. “That’s perfect, you’re perfect. So good. Deeper – c’mon.”

His jaw was set, his eyes half-closed; she could feel him struggling not to come. Deeper, yes, as deep as he could go; a claiming, possessive. Maybe one day they would take it for granted, making love. Maybe one day it would stop being a miracle, having him with her, inside her, and yet not needing to be afraid.

“I love you,” she said. “I love you. Now fuck me – hard as you like –”

The wool of the coat rasped against the seat of the armchair. Pleasure rattled through her, shocked the breath from her body, slowly at first, hard thrust in and languid pull out, her body clinging to him, and then in again, forcing her open, jolting her, her tits bouncing. Natasha cupped them, feeling her skin a little pebbled with the cool air, the weight and softness and the press of her hard nipples between her fingers; she groped herself lazily as he fucked her, made it a show. At last James picked up the pace, and she caught hold of the arms of the chair to steady herself, pulling at the upholstery. His face was flushed and set and wild with lust, completely unguarded, beautiful.

“So good to me,” she said again, struggling to keep that caressing tone he himself was so good at while he was using her like this. “So good _for_ me. Stay here forever, just like this.” He slid his hands up her flanks and down again to her hips, pushing the coat back, the caress hot as a brand. She was breathless, gasping, moaning. He urged her right leg up over his shoulder, spreading her wider, sliding deeper inside; she sobbed.

“Yeah.” He laughed shortly, turned his head to kiss the bruises he’d laid on her thigh. “What you want. Everything you want.”

“This – just – this, I –”

“Make you come?” He flexed his left hand on her thigh, his right sliding from her hip over her stomach, heavy and possessive, the heel of his hand resting on her mons. He was inside her, right there.

“Yes. You too.”

He blew out a breath of pure relief that made her laugh. His skin was beginning to gleam with perspiration, his hair hanging over his forehead; Natasha tightened her left leg around his waist, urging him on, moaning. That lovely relentless pace was pushing her out of her mind, her eyes kept sliding shut, she didn’t know what to do with her hands; sweet tension made her skin tight, spiralling higher, her body aching as he pounded her, orgasm closer and closer.

“You too,” she said again. “Then –”

“Bedroom.”

“Then flip me over and do it again.”

His fingers on her fumbled, his shoulders tense, his breathing harsh, and while she laughed he rubbed her swollen, aching clit with his fingertip, just one fingertip. Her whole body jolted with pleasure, her hips arching up to meet him, she was nearly – just –

God, god yes. James pulsed inside her, his hips jerking; panting, he pitched forwards over her body, and Natasha wrapped her arms around his shoulders, her fingers in his sweat-damp hair. She could barely keep her eyes open. The coat was too hot, damp and sticky with her sweat; with luck it had not – come into contact with any other bodily fluids. James’ forehead rested against her sternum, his arms limp on the seat at either side of her, both her legs around his waist again.

“So beautifully good to me,” she whispered, and watched a shiver chase over his skin with delight, felt the happy little wriggle of his body against hers. “So sweet and so eager.”

“Tasha,” he said, muffled.

“Shh. Welcome home, darling. My sweet generous love. The things you do for me.”

At last he sighed, soft and contented and exactly as sweet as she’d said he was. “I missed you.”

“I missed you.” Natasha sighed too. “So glad to be home. So glad to be with you.”

 

**V.**

Sometimes – OK, all the time – Bucky missed having a proper job. That whole thing where he did work he enjoyed, instead of pushing badly-written mission reports around his desk for days on end, wielding a red pen like an assault weapon and returning them to sender like a schoolboy’s marked-up essay – seriously, it was only too clear some days that smart as his teammates were, their talents were not in the area of prose writing – the conference calls and the justifications and the requisitions, oh lord the requisitions. How _did_ a group of enhanced humans and a demi-god destroy so much training equipment on a semi-regular basis, Bucky wondered. Really he did. No, really.

So yeah, a proper job. Paperwork he liked, regular hours, less shooting at people – less being shot at. His favourite pipe dream was the one where the whole world forgot who he was, and he waltzed out of here and back into normal life, with the occasional detour when Steve needed bailing out, without having to change his face or his name or anything else about himself.

Of course, if he did that, the inevitable downsides were that a) he would see Steve a lot less and b) Natasha Romanov wouldn’t be locking his office door behind herself at half past five on a Friday afternoon, looking like she couldn’t decide if she wanted to share a joke with him or fuck him through the floor.

Both sounded good to Bucky.

“You doing anything?”

“Nothing I’d not be happy to stop doing,” Bucky said. “Why?”

“Oh, reasons,” Natasha said. “You know. Like how I’ve just spent five excruciating minutes in an elevator with Steve, discussing the kind of girl you like to date.”

Bucky was too busy being kinda turned on by the way she swished across the room to pay proper attention to her words. On a five second time lag, his upstairs brain reasserted itself.

“Whaaat?”

“He wants you to be happy,” Natasha said. There was something lascivious about the way her fingers trailed along the edge of his desk as she came around it; Bucky leaned back in his chair and pushed it away from the desk, so she had room to, for example, curl that gorgeous body into his lap. “He’s worried about you. Because you’re not dating.”

“He did not say that,” Bucky said.

“He put on his most _sickeningly_ earnest face and enquired of me whether or not I _knew_ anyone who would be _good_ for you,” Natasha said. The emphasis she put on those otherwise unoffending words had an ominous undercurrent.

Bucky took this opportunity to tip his head back and smile at her, spreading his thighs and letting his shoulders go loose and relaxed. “I know someone who’s always been good for me,” he said.

She tapped her fingernails on his desktop, four little clicks that promised a raw back by the time she was done with him. “That so?” One perfect eyebrow arched delicately.

“This stunning redhead,” said Bucky.

“It was you mouthing off about stunning redheads that put Steve up to it,” Natasha said.

“Seriously, we’re locked in my office, everybody’s going home, I wanna lay you out on my desk and make you scream, and you’re thinking about _Steve_?”

At last she snorted, her face softening, and Bucky caught hold of her wrist and pulled her into his lap, where she curled up sweet and warm and smiling and kissed him. She’d been eating mint sweets, the taste hot and sharp on his tongue.

“No desks,” she murmured.

“No? The ambulance –”

“There were a lot of extenuating circumstances with the ambulance!”

“And the Swainston mission.”

Natasha grinned. “That was on you.”

“Well, I’m happy for the desk to also be on me.” He kissed her again, and she wriggled into a more comfortable position and stroked his face, sighing into the kiss, though only for a minute.

“Seriously –”

“Seriously, what?” Bucky pulled back. “The door’s locked.”

“Half our friends have _superpowers_.”

She was so snappish all of a sudden that he nearly said something mostly untrue and entirely vicious about them being _her_ friends, not his. Instead he took his hands off her, slowly and deliberately. She didn’t stand up. Bucky put his hands on the arms of the chair, loose, limp.

Natasha closed her eyes. For a few moments she breathed hard and quick, her chest rising and falling visibly. “OK. I’m gonna –”

“Don’t you leave,” Bucky said, his temper snapping after all. “Where’s the harm, Tasha? Your room, my office, what difference does it make?”

“What difference does it make to _you_?”

“At first, all the damn difference in the world. There are entire webpages out there dedicated to picking apart every single moment of my life – every bit of innocent blood on my hands that’s – that’s pain, and nakedness, and it doesn’t even stop in 1945, oh no, because I got the dubious distinction of being _famous_ by association, thank you Steve Rogers! There’s whole books about me. I don’t want our relationship under that magnifying glass, I don’t want what I feel for you dissected by –” Them, whoever that meant: the media, everyone with an internet connection, everyone they knew in person.

“But?” Her jaw was set.

“I’m not ashamed of it either,” Bucky said. “I’m not so much of a coward that I can’t stand up there and say, I’m in love with Natasha Romanov. And I refuse to scramble about like adolescents in front of the others as if I were ashamed of it.”

“Oh you do, do you.” Natasha was flushed. “So, what, you think I am ashamed of it?”

“Of course not,” he said, and hoped to god it was true. Not that he would blame her, after what he’d done to her, and after the humiliation – the agony – that had followed their discovery, back then; imagine her explaining it to the Bartons, I’m sleeping with a man who tried to kill me on three separate occasions, that’d go over well with the children, surely –

“But I might be, and you wouldn’t blame me,” she said. Oh why did she know him so well, why. “God, you make me angry. It just doesn’t occur to you that you deserve better, does it?”

“Deserve,” Bucky said blankly. “I don’t know what the hell I deserve, and I’m too selfish to want to try and work it out. I like being alive too much. I know what I want, though.”

She shivered, her eyes closed. Then she opened them again and said, “Some sweet ordinary girl with a kitten and a wardrobe full of pastel vintage dresses –”

His jaw dropped, actually honest-to-god dropped, so astonished he couldn’t get a word out, and Natasha burst out laughing and grabbed his waistcoat and kissed him, hot and wet and possessive.

“Your face,” she said, laughing into his mouth, “your face was a picture. Don’t worry, darling. You have exactly what you want.” He put his hands on her back in time to feel her shiver, head to toe. “You’ve always had it.”

“Yeah?” he murmured. Her back arched as he stroked it, her head tipping back: throat exposed, pretty tits all but presented for him, under the layers of silky blouse and undershirt and bra.

“Always,” she promised. “I –”

“Shhh.”

“No. I’m not ashamed of you. I never was or will be. I don’t care how many Odessas they make for us. And if the notion ever crosses your mind again, _ever_ –”

“Summary execution?” he murmured, his eyes closed; hot relief was filling up his chest. The stupid thing was, he hadn’t really believed – but it was hard not to be afraid, apparently.

She tugged his head back by the hair gently to brush hot kisses over his face. “By silken rope and sexual exhaustion.”

Bucky sniggered. “Very tempting.”

“Is it?” Innocent as a babe, except that she was pushing her hand between his spread thighs and rubbing his cock through his slacks.

Bucky opened his eyes a ways. Natasha was smiling at him.

“I thought you had a suggestion earlier.”

“I thought you didn’t want –”

She made a moue. Under the gentle pressure of her hand, his cock was stirring; Bucky was growing hot as the sweet tension of desire built. “I hate fighting with you.”

“Oh, apology sex.”

“Well, why not?” Natasha grinned at him.

“Hmm.” He peered past her at the desk: massive collateral damage if he tried to sweep everything off, complete collapse of vital infrastructure. One day. One day he would do it. She was wearing pants, or he could have ripped a few strategic bits of fabric and had her just like this, bounce her on his cock in the stupid ergonomic office chair until she came apart for him. “Next time wear the dress again…”

She laughed delightedly. “If you want.” Right hand still and warm at his crotch, she began to flick open the buttons of his shirt with her left. The waistcoat was a little more troublesome, the fabric being thicker. Bucky leaned back against the chair and watched her with half-closed eyes, the concentrated little crease between her eyebrows, the way her hair fell over her shoulders.

It wasn’t just apology sex. She was pushing herself precisely because it had scared her when he first brought it up…

“Natalia,” he said softly.

Shirt and waistcoat unbuttoned, she pushed the edges back and smoothed her hand over the wide strip of skin thus exposed; his hips rolled up into her hand, his body shivering.

“I won’t crawl back into that cell no matter what,” she said.

God he loved her. “You amaze me. You’re so incredibly brave.”

He had to catch her hot face in his hands and make her meet his eyes, her shoulders drawn in.

“I’m not. You –”

“I ran,” he said. “I took off… you stayed and turned it back on them. And every time – you’re _stunning_.”

“And what, coming back was nothing? The exoneration – everything you went through, just to be sure they would never make you hurt someone again.” Natasha’s voice ran through him like liquid fire, dizzying, leaving him breathless and exposed and raw and happy. “I’m so proud of you it _hurts_ , and you thought –”

Bucky shook his head. “I didn’t. I didn’t really. Sweetheart, just looking at you makes me happy. Looking at you knowing that every morning I wake up you’re in my bed…”

She bit her lip. Her lovely eyes were very wide, her pupils blown, the skin of her neck and the soft underside of her jaw hot under his hands. “So let me apologise.” She brushed another kiss across his lips, so soft it was barely there. “I don’t know why I – Steve talking about it, I suppose. About us. And not even knowing it.” Slow wide smile. “I love you.”

“I’m all yours.” His voice had gone rough.

“Tell me how you want me. I don’t think we’re moving the Hindu Kush off your desk…”

Bucky laughed out loud and pulled her down to kiss her; the hot mouth opened for him eagerly, little gusts of breath against his whenever she sighed, letting him chase that mint taste in her mouth, letting herself relax completely into his lap, under his hands. Wet, a little messy; obscenely loud in the silent office – noise echoed differently off the walls here, it made her little moans seem brand new, beckoning, tempting.

“Love the noises you make,” Bucky said lowly, stroking his hands down her back to fill them with the curve of her ass, making her arch up against him and writhe and push down into his palms. He loved the way she moved too, how even curled in his lap and red-faced with lust she was graceful. God he was hard. She kept brushing against his cock, and every time it made him shudder and his hips twitch.

“Really ought to keep quiet,” Natasha said, and bit his bottom lip; the tiny flash of pain went straight to his cock, and, deliberately, shamelessly, he moaned for it. “Shh-shhh. You want everyone walking in here while you fuck me?”

“Do you? Strip you and show you off: the Black Widow, _mine_.”

Oh that made her happy: she clutched at him and gasped. Bucky grinned, kissing her throat, feeling her pulse hammer under his lips. “All mine,” he said again, and tightened his hands on her ass, fingers digging into the flesh through her pants. She rubbed her hands over his chest, gasping, a lovely firm touch that made him throb with arousal.

“All yours,” she murmured.

“I know. Hey.” He kissed her again, slow and deep; when he drew back her eyelids fluttered, her gaze lost and distant and drunk on them.

“Hmm.” Natasha cupped his face in her hands and leaned in for another kiss, and Bucky pinched her hip lightly, making her squirm.

“Think you can make it home like this?”

Her eyes flew open. “What!”

“Yeah. All the way home in the passenger seat, all turned on and –”

“That is cruelty.” She pressed her hand to his cock again, and his hips jerked up involuntarily; she laughed at him. “You sure _you_ can make it?”

“Let’s find out,” Bucky said, grinning.

“What about your apology sex?”

“Does it ruin the whole thing if we have it at home?”

“Mm. No. I suppose not.” She straightened the edges of his shirt with a yank and began to button it back up again; Bucky leaned in and kissed her pouting mouth, nibbled at her lips, licked her palate and the soft hot inside of her lower lip; she splayed her hands across his chest, shivering. “Don’t –”

“What, what, I want you all wound up.”

“Cruel and unusual.”

“My apology, my rules.” He grinned.

Natasha huffed. “Oh, you’re –”

“You’re not gonna be happy till you’ve desecrated my office now, are you.”

She set her jaw and glowered at him – not very convincingly. Bucky kissed her, again and again, cupping her face in his hands, burying his fingers in her hair, caressing her neck; for the first time he groped her breasts through her clothes, and she arched into his hands and laughed.

“Do something for me?”

“Uh-hmm.”

He nudged her off his lap; she put her foot on the floor, surprised, and then understood when he leaned back in the chair and spread his legs.

“Oh I see. You get to enjoy yourself, and I go home in a state.”

Bucky bit his lip. “Pretty much.”

“Well,” Natasha murmured. She pushed his knees further apart, stepping between them; the way she went to her knees was about the most graceful thing Bucky had ever seen. God. Slowly she unsnapped his pants and drew the zipper down; he put his hands in her hair again, stroking it back from her face, holding her head. “I did say apology sex.” And she freed his cock from his underwear and licked her lips and took him in: lovely hot friction, the faint scrape of her teeth, the press of her tongue against the vein, the wet soft clutch of her throat when she took him deep for a moment and then pulled back, her fingers around the base of his cock, the caressing, catlike licks of her tongue up and down and around the head, and then her mouth again, the vibration of her humming, her fingers playing with his balls. Bucky let his head fall back and strangled several undignified moans, loving the hot approach of orgasm, the way he moved underneath her, the feel of her hair spilling over his hands, the tension that tightened and spiralled and finally snapped, all dizzy pleasure and his mind disconnected from his body as his hips jerked up into her mouth and the contractions as she swallowed prolonged his orgasm.

“God that was good.” Bucky stroked her hair, tugging her back up. He put the little croon in his voice that always made her go all sweet and pliant for him, rising to his feet unsteadily, making her lean against the desk. “You’re so sweet to me, darling, not done a thing to apologise for but on your knees for me so pretty just the same.” He kissed her, lightly and then deeper, and popped the button of her jeans open; it was a terrible angle, so he turned her around and kicked her feet apart gently and wrapped his right arm around her torso, trailed kisses up her neck. “Here.” Oh she was soaked, trembling and wild for it, soft and swollen, he loved the feel of her cunt around his fingers. “Gonna take care of you just right.”

“Stop running your mouth off and – oh. _Ohh_.” Natasha’s hips bucked into his hand; she sighed and wriggled and laughed that gorgeous laugh, the bubbly delighted one she only ever got in bed with him – he had to tell her how much he loved it. She was gripping his forearm tight – she’d actually gone up on her tiptoes a little – there, the eager little hitch in her breathing –

Bucky pulled his hand out of her panties. For a second she was still straining to come, her hips rocking, her face screwed up; then she realised.

“Oh no, no, you can’t, _no_.”

He caught her wrists in his right hand, laughing, and brought his left to her mouth. “Sure I can.” The clever mouth that had taken him apart so easily opened for his wet fingers; the curl of her tongue around the metal made him shiver. “There. _Now_ we’re gonna go home.”

“God forbid I ever offer you apology sex again,” Natasha said. Her body was still trembling, her face flushed; Bucky petted her as she came down a ways, reached down and did her pants back up. “Oh come _on_.”

“Home,” Bucky said again, kissing the side of her hot face, her temple. “Our apartment, our bed.”

Natasha groaned. “If we meet anyone, I’m coming down with something.” But she turned her head and kissed him sweet and eager, and, yeah, when they got home Bucky was going to tie her down and make her come until she cried.

They didn’t meet anyone on the way to the car, though this was mostly because they dodged into an empty room every time they heard anyone coming, laughing like idiots, and once they were in the car and well out of the compound Bucky took his hand off the wheel and cupped her cunt through her jeans, her legs spread, one foot on the dash, and made her a very large number of very filthy promises, all of which she proceeded to hold him to in more or less perfect detail over the course of the weekend.

He refused to let the _do we tell them_ question hover over him, or them. It wouldn’t make him miserable to keep it a secret; there wasn’t much that would make him miserable, as long as he was with her, as long as he had himself, and Steve, and a job to do that made a difference. It was just that, well, she was so damn important to him, and he wasn’t ashamed, and Bucky thought, sometimes, that it would be nice to put his arm around her in the middle of the day for no reason, and not have to stamp out every urge to kiss her before he even had it properly. It would just – be nice. That was all.

 

**VI.**

See, at bottom, the issue was this: it wasn’t the sex that had damned them.

Sometimes Natasha remembered the door breaking down and the pinching hands on her body – saw the photos in her mind’s eye, glossy black and white, strewn across the floor, speckled with her blood. Vienna, Shanghai, Istanbul, East Berlin... he’d been smiling, in the East Berlin photo, she’d been straddling his lap, her arms over his shoulders, and he had his head tilted back, and they were smiling at each other. They had been fully dressed. Shanghai – she still remembered that exact moment, when the door had closed and the footsteps had faded and she’d turned to him and run the length of the little hotel room into his arms, only three or four steps, laughing.

So yeah. Not the sex. Karpov was sometimes indulgent of his best assets, and might well have turned a blind eye to a fuck. But that it was sustained, that they came back to each other over and over, that there was no one else – that the Winter Soldier had not simply fucked one of the Widows and walked away, but had wanted that Widow specifically, had kissed her and caressed her and made her laugh; that he’d slept in her arms, and smiled to see her face when he woke. That Natasha had given herself to him without asking for anything except him in return, that she had not even had the excuse of playing some angle, fishing for advantages, but had just – wanted him, as if she were a human being who had desires, needs, emotions of her own. As if she were a woman who served no one but herself.

The fact that James’ conditioning had begun to break apart hadn’t helped. But it had fallen apart because they loved each other, because for the first time in years something had happened that had touched and stirred his humanity, pulled him out of the straitjacket they had held his mind in...

She would have an easier time of it, she sometimes thought, if they both stripped naked in the conference room in the middle of the Monday afternoon briefing and fucked right there on the table within arm’s length of everyone they knew. Sex was deceptive: only the people having it would ever be sure exactly what it meant to them. Other gestures were less… less open to interpretation, particularly in combination with one another. His arm across her shoulders; the way she liked to lace her fingers with his; the habitual, absent-minded way they kissed each other hello or goodbye; the endearments; the – oh, what was the use. It all built up, was the point. On the strength of the evidence, only one conclusion was possible, then and now.

Sometimes she wondered how on earth the others had missed it, all this time. The blue dress; the coat; the way neither of them ever met up with anyone on a Saturday, because Saturdays were for each other; the myriad of little things – how angry he got when she was in danger, how obviously she shut all her feelings down when he was – all the times they’d had sex in places and at times they should be rights have been discovered – thinking about that pile-up of evidence made her anxious, set her stomach squirming.

Natasha hated being afraid. She couldn’t stamp the emotion out, maybe, but she could throw herself at whatever she feared and face it till it backed the hell down. But this was different. She refused to lose him again.

Of course, the question was, was it sensible to think she would lose him if they let people know… no, it wasn’t. But, god, she’d already flung so much of what she was out there across the internet for any idiot to read, and the thought of having to do it again pissed her off. The thought that she had to do it again for a group of people she had mostly given up on trusting ever again pissed her off even more.

Then again, _had_ she given up on them, or was she just enjoying her moral superiority? Anyway. They weren’t the point. The real question was not, how would the Kindergarten Otherwise Known As The Avengers react. The question was, would it make her happy? Would it make him happy? Was this, in short, part and parcel of the kind of person she wanted to be?

“You OK?”

She jumped a little, looked up at him; he was standing by the bed, smiling at her, his hair damp from the shower, still half-naked.

“Yes. Sorry.” Natasha had been sitting cross-legged on the bed, staring into her coffee, for hours, apparently.

“Are you sure?” James sat down on the edge of the mattress, torso turned to face her, leaning on his right hand.

“I’ve just –” she gestured. “Been thinking.”

“About –”

“Us – what we’re doing.”

He nodded. “I’m sorry I –”

“Oh shush. I understand that you want –” Normality.

“I want you.”

She bit her lip, smiling. “I know. I don’t want to make you unhappy. I just – see, the whole thing, it’s just…” She drew a breath. “I did that already. I gave the whole world everything I thought I knew about myself, and it didn’t change a damn thing. And after Leipzig – after Leipzig, I don’t much want them knowing that much about me. Knowing something so important about me.” James nodded slowly; Natasha leaned over and touched his face, her fingers warm from the coffee cup. “I don’t want people like Tony knowing that much about you, either.”

“Oh you leave Stark to me. He –”     

“He’s a dick to you because you won’t prostrate yourself with guilt every time he walks in the room, and you don’t rise to any of his baits because you think it’s childish. And if there’s one thing Tony hates, it’s being ignored.”

James pursed his mouth and shrugged. He wouldn’t change, she knew that. She loved it, to be honest, that he was so – so unprovoked. He had a temper, but he deployed it with the same strategic precision that she did, and she had always respected that.

Natasha smiled at him. “I resent it, I suppose. I resent it that I can’t walk in there and tell them we’re in love and trust them not to use that against us.”

“When and how would they ever?”

“Leipzig was not something that any of us _predicted_.”

“Well no. But, look. The fact is, they’re not that smart.” Natasha started laughing, and he leaned over and stole a kiss, smiling too. “I mean it. People like you and I see this as a foothold. They don’t know the first thing about how to turn this into an advantage. They’re good kids.”

She sighed. “And what happens when people like you and I find out about it?”

James shrugged. “Are we or aren’t we the best at what we do?”

“Well,” Natasha said. “Of course we are.”

“Look, I don’t – if it would make you miserable, we won’t do it. I promise I won’t, you know, seethe with resentment over it. But this is – the most important thing. You and I. And much as it means to me that no one is pawing through everything I am anymore – you know, in Bucharest, I had these journals where I was trying to work out – everything. And sometimes I picture them being passed round the Pentagon or somewhere, and – anyway.” A muscle ticked in his jaw; he shook his head, brushing the thoughts away, impatient at himself. “It’s not actually that big of a deal.” Liar. Of course it was. His very mind, broken apart, being – pawed over, as he’d said. “I shouldn’t have put it on paper in the first place.” Oh darling. “But that’s kind of the point. Everything I’m ashamed of, everything that I would undo if I could.” He made a gesture, throwing something away. “Out there. The one thing that – that makes it all better… the one thing that has me look at myself and think, Barnes, maybe you’re worth it.”

Natasha said angrily, “You _are_ , you stupid jerk. You’re worth _everything_. I want you safe. I want us safe.”

“I love you for it.” He reached over and took her free hand in his, metal bright against flesh. “You’re worth everything too. Including a risk or ten.”

She kissed his knuckles, the smooth plates body-warm against her lips. “Not a word about Before,” she said. “They never learn about that. Nothing about where we live.”

He tapped his thumb against her hand. “Promise me you’re OK with it.”

“I am. Mostly. I – you’re right. My head knows you’re right.” Suddenly she added, “And I don’t want to be who I was at SHIELD either. Someone who lies all the time. But I put that aside and decided to trust people, and – Leipzig! Because life is unfair.” She laughed shortly. “But that’s not a good enough excuse to go back, either.” 

“C’mere.” James gave her hand a little tug; Natasha put her coffee down on the bedside table and crawled into his lap. “I love you.”

Imagine hearing him say that in public; imagine him showing it, openly, all the time. Kissing her goodbye before a mission, and leaving the compound together, and endearments slipping out in the middle of a briefing. Natasha hid her sudden smile in the warm curve of his neck and held him tight.

 

**VII.**

When Steve cornered him in the elevator a few days later Bucky knew he was in trouble. They were alone, and the elevators weren’t bugged, though they did have cameras. Still, if you turned your back to them you could talk in perfect privacy without doing anything so obvious as locking yourself in your office with someone.

“How’d it go?” Steve asked.

Bucky looked up from the newspaper he had been ostentatiously pretending to read on his phone.

“With the stunning redhead,” Steve clarified.

“Why, you wondering if she has a friend?”

“Maybe I am. Maybe we could double-date. I promise I’m much better behaved now than in 1942.”

That was true, actually. Sometimes, these days, Steve was almost relaxed. At the very least he no longer carried that permanent, pre-emptive defensiveness in the set of his shoulders and the sulky turn of his mouth with which he had so successfully run off almost everyone he’d ever met, back then.

“I’m proud of you,” Bucky said, and meant it.

“I know,” Steve said cheerily, and laughed when Bucky glowered at him. “Come on. Who was she, what happened?”

“Uh, no one and nothing,” Bucky said. Would Nat want this to be how it all came out? Almost definitely not.  

“Why _not_ ,” said Steve, exasperated. “Is it the arm?”

“What,” said Bucky. “No it is not the arm.” Natasha had never minded the arm, even Before. She thought it was sexy, he was fairly sure. At least, she loved it when he fingered her with his left hand. OK, with someone else, yeah, there would probably be hang-ups about the arm. But he’d shot her twice and she liked to bring up her disfiguring scars whenever they fought over whose turn it was to clean the bathroom, so hang-ups about his prosthetic were sort of stupid, in that context.

“Because,” said Steve, arranging his face into a sanctimonious look, “if it is that’s a lousy excuse. There’s always –”

Bucky said, “Why are you doing this to me.”

“Payback,” Steve said promptly. “You’ve been trying to get me to date since we were fifteen, I’m returning the favour.”

“I hate you,” Bucky said contemplatively.

“I know,” said Steve. “Look, Nat’s good at setting people up.”

Bucky said, “No she isn’t,” very hurriedly.

“Sure she is,” said Steve. “Let her find you someone. I’ve never known you go so long without dating anyone.”

“Oh, please,” said Bucky. “Make me sound more like a womanising asshole, Steve, I’m begging you.”

“You _like_ dating,” said Steve. “So go date!” His face arranged itself into that self-righteously earnest look that had strung half their teachers, three parish priests and the entire local police station along by the nose for years, and Bucky found that for the first time in his memory he wanted to punch it, instead of appreciate the unmitigated cheek of it. “I want you to be _happy_ ,” Steve said soulfully.

“For god’s sake,” said Bucky. “What, I have to be one to one the guy I was in 1944 before _you’re_ happy?”

Steve crossed his arms over his chest. “Don’t come that with me. I know you know that it doesn’t matter.”

“I know you know that I know that you know,” Bucky said mockingly. Then he sighed and put his phone away at last. “Why?”

“I screwed up a lot of things about the first, oh, half a decade I was out of the ice,” Steve said. “I don’t like thinking of you being in that place that I was in.”

Now he was being honest; he was smiling that wry smile he got when he was telling you something he wasn’t much proud of about himself. After a moment, Bucky nodded. “I’m all right,” he said quietly. “You’re here.”

Steve’s real, proper smile had always been pretty charming, and it made his resemblance to his mother stand out strongly, which – these days – gave Bucky a funny shock of recognition. It hadn’t used to, but that had been before Steve’s face had changed. Bucky smiled back, grateful, in spite of the superfluity, for Steve’s concern.

The elevator pinged, interrupting their moment; thankfully it was Natasha, her nose in a sheaf of printed out reports, a rollerball clamped between her teeth. When she saw them she smiled – not quite as honest as her at-home-with-Bucky smile, or the one she kept for the Barton kids, but close.

“Hey. Did you catch Helen’s reports about that medical tech?”

“Hey – yes, who feels like a trip to Seoul?” said Steve. And then, because he was a malicious little asshole who couldn’t let anything go and who was apparently _still not over_ the Coney Island trip of _1933_ – count the intervening years! – he added, “Bucky’s promising to date people, Nat, maybe you could –”

“I’m _promising_ to get into your apartment and tie-dye all your shirts in bright pink!”

“He’d wear them,” Natasha said. She was still smiling at him, and there was that cute little wrinkle in her nose that she got whenever she thought he was being adorable.

“I know,” said Bucky. “But I’d get a laugh out of watching him deal with Stark going on about it.”

“Oh shut up,” said Steve, disgusted – that aspect obviously hadn’t occurred to him. “All I’m saying –”

“You talk too much,” Bucky informed him. Natalia was _still_ smiling. At him. Specifically. In front of Steve. “You want me to date? All right. I’ll give it a go.” Seriously, that little wrinkle was a strategic weapon. It made him stupid. Absolutely brainless. He drew a breath. “Natasha, would you like to go to dinner with me on Friday?”

“Oh take it seriously,” Steve said grumpily, and promptly choked when Natasha said, “I’d like that.”

Bucky’s heart was hammering in his chest. “Yeah?”

“Uh-huh.” She nodded, eyes shining, and even blushed a little. Bucky’s upstairs brain was in awe of the sheer artistry that went into that girlish blush, the tiny smile, the way she couldn’t quite meet his gaze while giving every impression that she would be happy to stare into his eyes for the rest of the afternoon. His downstairs brain was completely taken in. God, that blush. He wanted to put his arm around her shoulders and kiss her hesitant little smile until the lush mouth relaxed for him and parted and the blush had a _real_ reason to exist.

“I know this great little Greek place.” Bucky realised he was grinning like an idiot, in spite of the fact that he’d booked a table at the little Greek place for Friday just last night, with her feet in his lap on the couch and both of them drinking red wine.

“I love Greek food,” Natasha admitted, biting her lower lip adorably.

“You have absolutely no shame whatsoever, either of you,” said Steve, disgusted. “Fine, fine, have it your way, don’t ever get laid again. Nat, I was counting on you.”

And when the elevator stopped he marched out, discontent and irritated.

Bucky’s jaw dropped. Natasha clapped her hand over her mouth. For a few blank seconds they stared at each other; then Bucky started laughing helplessly.

“That clueless asshole!”

“I’m going to drag you into a broom closet and screw you into next week,” Natasha promised in a muffled voice. “Find you a date! Over my dead dismembered body.”

“I can’t believe he saw right through that and still got it wrong.”

“I love him so much,” Natasha said, and started laughing too.

“This is going to be more difficult than I thought, apparently.”

“Please,” Natasha said. She gave the cameras a sideways look. “Come here.”

“Yeah?” Bucky laughed.

“Maeve is on security camera duty; she will not disappoint.”

“Why is an inveterate gossip manning the security cameras anyway,” Bucky wondered, reeling her in with one hand and taking the reports away from her with the other, so there was nothing between them and she could slide her hands up his chest to his shoulders the way she always liked to. The possessive little gesture always made him feel like she was taking inventory of what was hers. “Why did an organisation that prides itself on its supposed professionalism hire an inveterate gossip.”

“I really like it when you complain about other people’s professionalism, Sergeant,” Natasha said. “You, the man who once –”

“There were a lot of extenuating circumstances with the ambulance,” Bucky said sanctimoniously, and kissed her when she laughed. Then he handed her the reports back, and picked up the rollerball for her where it had fallen to the floor, and they went their separate ways.

 

**VIII.**

“Oh, I can’t,” Natasha said.

“Just a beer,” Wanda said.

James wasn’t looking at her, but she could see the twitch of his deft fingers and the tightness at the corner of his mouth. Oh, leave it all up to me, will you? Of course he would. If she backed out, he would never, ever cast it up to her, even when he should. Sometimes she wanted to grab hold of him and scream at him. _Dammit_ , she thought, _stop making me. Together, or not at all._

Then he looked over at her and winked.

Natasha turned to Wanda with a sunny smile. “I know,” she said, “but we have reservations.”

“About what?” Scott asked vaguely.

“Dinner,” said James.

The whole room went silent. This was mostly because Hope had just turned CNN off and James’ quiet remark fell into a momentary lull anyway. He met all comers with a cheerful look that wasn’t quite a smile, back straight, shoulders loose.

“Together?” said Sam, his voice climbing in disbelief before he hauled it back down to normal registers. “You two?”

“Yes,” Natasha said. She did the girly little look down and blush thing again, because James had been so enchanted with it in spite of himself in the elevator, and, unable to help herself, she twisted a lock of hair around her fingers and then straightened it out and tucked it behind her ear. Everyone was staring at them – back and forth, like a tennis match. James was rinsing his coffee mug out; Natasha was shutting her laptop down, ready to leave with him.

“On a _date_ ,” said Sam.

“Is it terribly old-fashioned?” James asked her earnestly. “You didn’t tell me it was terribly old-fashioned.”

“No I want to go to the Greek place,” Natasha said.

He grinned at her, too openly, boyishly pleased to be anything but put on. _And_ he was wearing the coat. That _man_.

“You mean Maeve was right?” Wanda blurted.

“Why did we hire that woman?” James demanded. “No, seriously, why?”

“So that I can find out what everybody is up to and how they’re feeling without having to go snooping in their stuff,” Natasha said calmly.

“Oh, the Central Intelligence Reception Desk,” said James, holding the door for her. “Good night, guys, see you on Monday.”

“It’s a one stop shop, it’s beautifully efficient,” Natasha said. “Have a good weekend, everyone.”

She slid her arm through his as they crossed the lobby, and he handed her into the cab as if it were 1945, and kissed her fingers before he let them go.

 

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End file.
